The Wall Street Journal runs one of their well written fact filled commentaries entitled, The Real Cost of Tackling Climate Change. This is exactly the type of accurate but meaningless analysis that is going to end up handing Wall Street over to anti-capitalist government oversight. It is “nice” to be well intentioned but it's important to be effective.
This is the sentence that pisses me off. “Begin with the current inventory of carbon dioxide emissions – CO2 being the principal greenhouse gas generated almost entirely by energy use”. Why? Because it accepts the premise that CO2 actually is a “principal greenhouse gas”. Until we understand and make the public aware that carbon dioxide is harmless to the environment, we are trapped into playing with the opponent’s language and to their advantage.
Every response to environmentalist rhetoric needs to demand an explanation of how CO2 can do what they claim. How does CO2 heat the air? By trapping energy? What energy? For how long? How come CO2 doesn’t trap energy in the rest of the world? For example beer. Beer is extremely carbonated and yet even when surrounded by solid matter on all sides, it still gets cold in a refrigerator. Why doesn’t CO2 stop beer from getting cold if CO2 “traps” heat? Isn’t outer space colder than an ice box?
P.S. Thanks for the link Steve: No Runny Eggs
